How to Build a Boyfriend from Scratch Read online

  “No, I know what it means. But you can’t feel it.”

  “I have sensory receptors and the ability to interpret the information from them. When my senses detect something harmful, I feel it as unpleasant. My body tells me to reject the source of the unpleasantness.”

  This was fascinating. Kelly knew, of course, that such defense mechanisms had been programmed into the androids, having had a hand in them herself. But the fact that he interpreted it as pain—even used the words “my body”—it was just so human. She hadn’t even considered that he might become hurt or tired by her requests, any more than her laptop might. Her curiosity reared. She felt her instinctive scientist’s itch to collect some data.

  “Is this painful?” she asked, flicking his arm.

  “A little.”

  “Is this?” She flicked him harder.

  “Ow,” he said, almost involuntarily. Pain clearly read on his face, yet he continued to just stand there and let her do what she wanted.

  “If this hurts, why isn’t your body telling you to move away from me?”

  “Because it’s you.”

  Kelly stopped, looking at him. The pain relaxed from his face, and he looked at her with clear, trusting eyes. She felt a twinge of guilt. “Would you like to see the couch somewhere else?” he asked.

  “No, this is good.” She moved it a final inch, then patted one of its seats. “Come and sit down.”

  Bravely, or maybe just foolishly, Kelly and Ethan had entered the glass and concrete behemoth of the Westfield Valley Fair mall on their second full Sunday together. Parking, aka Car Wars, was so stressful that Kelly nearly kept right on going to the exit, but the thought of her mother’s horror if Ethan were to show up to the wedding in a month wearing Target’s finest kept her in check. She had texted her mom that morning to officially notify her that Ethan would be her wedding date, and after Diane had responded with an enthusiasm that could only be expressed via seventeen separate exclamation marks (Kelly had counted), she had begun e-mailing so rapidly and in such volume that Kelly thought at first her computer had a virus. By the time Diane had sent the first dozen forwards and links to wardrobe suggestions for Ethan, Kelly decided to pack it in and take him shopping.

  Clothes shopping typically activated all of her social neuroses with the dinging of a thousand tiny alarm bells. In fact, she almost never did it without Priya at her side for a second opinion. But of course Priya couldn’t know about this. Kelly was realizing that she had underestimated how difficult it would be to hide the presence of a new person in her home and her daily life from her best friend. The other day at work, she had nearly mentioned without thinking how Ethan had helped her rearrange the furniture. She would have to come up with some sort of story for Priya before the wedding photos came out and Ethan was at her side in every one. For now, she pushed the thought aside.

  She had intended to steer him to Macy’s for her traditional range of clean-cut neutrals, something that couldn’t possibly violate Diane’s sartorial rules. But the display in the window of an upscale menswear boutique, vibrant with colors for their early spring collection, caught her eye. The models in the posters brooded above their pastel shirts and printed pants. Ethan was better-looking than any of them. She pulled him into the store, just to see.

  The interior was a fever dream: salmon-colored ties, socks with patterns of actual salmon, newsboy caps and suspenders paired with ’70s rock tees, even a display case of bolo ties. Kelly felt like she had tried to dip a toe into the men’s fashion pool and been snatched by the riptide.

  “What do you like?” Ethan asked her.

  “Nothing,” she said honestly. “Come on, let’s go to Macy’s.”

  But a sales rep wearing distressed jeans and a suit jacket with a peacock feather peeking out of the pocket stopped in front of Ethan. “And what can I do for you?” he asked, giving him a once-over.

  Kelly only let the sales rep help them to be polite. She was positive that the blue suit jacket, the eggshell-colored trousers with subtle green threading, and the shirt and tie with contrasting patterns that he had selected would look ridiculous together, and as she sat outside the dressing room, jiggling her foot, she held her purse over her shoulder so she could spring up and leave as soon as Ethan was done. But when he stepped out, her grip on it went slack. He looked like he had just stepped off a runway.

  “Wow. I mean, um, that looks nice,” she said.

  “What do you think?” He gave a little spin.

  “I think we’ll take it,” she said.

  For once, Kelly was actually enjoying herself at the mall rather than feeling as though she had been sentenced there. She wasn’t in the mood to go home right away, though their work was finished. So she swung into her old tech geek standby, but was quickly driven out by the cocktail of scents found only in a Silicon Valley Apple Store—the sweat of excited adolescent boys, woodsy gender-neutral cologne, and the heady adrenal funk of rabid capitalism. Instead, she and Ethan stopped into the next shop over, a California-based botanical beauty brand, letting the powdery, herbal scent wash the Apple Store off of them. She picked up a tiny container, squinting. “Daily beauty fudge? Remind me never to put candy on my face.” But just as they were turning to leave, Kelly’s eyes swept the back of the store. And she saw Tiffany Galecki.

  Back when Kelly was her lab partner at Westridge High, Tiffany had inarguably been the hottest girl in the eleventh grade, and the most popular. Kelly hadn’t wanted to be Tiffany—that much socializing would be agonizing, and cheerleading and student council sounded more punishing than detention—but she would have been happy to have the effect on other people that Tiffany did. Tiffany always had a date to every dance, she was always chosen right away as a partner for class projects, she always had pages on pages of colorful year-end notes in her yearbook where Kelly had little more than a few “Have a good summer”s. And most of all, it appeared to come so effortlessly to her. Tiffany’s visual presence on Facebook in the years since graduation was a regular reminder to Kelly of some of the most awkward times in her heroically awkward life, and an unspoken standard of prettiness, popularity, and social grace which Kelly, in all those same intervening years, knew that she had come no closer to attaining.

  They had been assigned partners in Advanced Biology junior year. Kelly had possessed the ability, willingness, and motivation to do all the work, and Tiffany had possessed … none of those things. She was never overtly mean or rude to Kelly. She was something much worse: uninterested. When the two of them were supposed to be completing an experiment together in class, Tiffany would drift from their shared station toward her friends, laughing and chatting with them while Kelly squinted at the minute lines printed on the sides of beakers, or at pink-stained slides under microscopes.

  Later, Kelly found herself in the same homeroom as Tiffany, who was chosen to be the class’s attendance monitor. On their first day of senior year, she stood at the front of the room, shifting her weight casually in her flowered wedges, calling the roll. “Kelly Suttle,” she called out when she reached the S’s. “Kelly Suttle?” Her eyes scraped over the class, moving onto Kelly and then right past her, continuing their search. After working side by side for all of junior year, she didn’t even remember Kelly’s name.

  It was this potent feeling of invisibility that flooded back over Kelly now as she stared across the store to where Tiffany manned the checkout counter. Her first instinct was to flee before Tiffany could catch sight of her. But that was the old Kelly, the nameless, squinting peon. The new Kelly, the Kelly who had come here with Ethan, didn’t have to flee. She found him blithely comparing the viscosities of different shower gels and gestured him forward.

  She took a good ten minutes to wind her way to the front of the store with Ethan trailing her, feigning an unhealthy interest in stands of lip balm, trying to think of a smart opening line, something that would sound clever and original, yet offhand, and also conveniently demonstrate how far she’d come since high
school. But when she forced herself with a sudden burst of will to round the final display table, hurtling into Tiffany’s view, all she could call out, in an unnaturally loud voice that also seemed to have suddenly acquired an unplaceable and improbable accent, was “Tiffany Galecki!”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Hi!” Tiffany’s chestnut hair was still long and bouncy, her nose a perfect little upturned mound. But her face wore a bored expression as she tidied a display of floral spritzers. She looked up now at Kelly’s interruption.

  “Tiffany, it’s Kel!” Kelly gushed. Not once before had she called herself “Kel.” “Kelly Suttle, from high school!”

  “Kelly Suttle!” Tiffany clearly had no idea who Kelly was. Kelly’s fleeting wish for a triumphant “look how far I’ve come since high school” narrative hadn’t acknowledged the fact that the before picture might be completely out of focus. As Ethan came and stood next to her, Tiffany’s eyes flickered to him.

  Just as Tiffany couldn’t disguise not remembering Kelly, she definitely couldn’t disguise being impressed by Ethan. She took him in, from his dark hair to his neat, perfectly shined shoes. “So nice to meet you …” she said, waiting for Ethan to supply his name, holding out a hand and shaking his for just an instant too long.

  “This is Ethan,” Kelly said. The tilt of Tiffany’s head, the curl of her lips—the queen bee was back out and ready to sting. Kelly felt as if she’d stepped back into eleventh grade.

  “What do you do around here?” Tiffany asked Ethan, her attention immediately off Kelly.

  “I teach,” Ethan said. “Astronomy.”

  “Oh wow, that’s amazing,” Tiffany breathed. “Kel, where did you find this guy?” She giggled, grabbing Kelly’s arm familiarly across the glass counter. So now they were best friends, Kelly realized. Ethan had impressed Tiffany, suddenly making Kelly a person of consequence by the power of osmosis. With him at her side, she appeared to have succeeded in a significant paradigm of American social life and private consciousness. She should be feeling vindicated, validated.

  It only made the reality of her life feel that much more disappointing.

  “She found me in a lab,” Ethan was replying. Kelly tensed—he knew not to share his origin story. “And she brought me to life.” He turned to Kelly and smiled. For an instant, she forgot about Tiffany.

  Tiffany giggled again and this time reached for Ethan’s arm, fluttering her lashes at him. “You are too much. Kelly, do you have any more like him stashed away?” she asked, her eyes never leaving Ethan’s sculpted face.

  “Kelly has all sorts of amazing things in her lab,” Ethan went on, lighting up. “She’s a genius.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Tiffany cooed.

  “She works at Automated Human Industries.”

  Tiffany shifted now to look at Kelly. “You do? The robot company?”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said, starting to pull Ethan away.

  “That’s so cool!” Kelly paused—suddenly, Tiffany’s admiration sounded genuine. “Oh my gosh, wait—you were my lab partner! The one who was so good at science!”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  “I had the hardest time with that stuff,” Tiffany sighed. “Well, I guess it’s gotten you pretty far. Congratulations.”

  Kelly felt a flush creeping into her face at the sincere praise. “Thanks. I mean, you look like you’re doing well too.” Taken by a sudden instinct, she grabbed a small jar from a display. “I’ve just got to try this”—she glanced at the label—“daily beauty fudge!”

  “Sure,” Tiffany said, taking the jar and ringing her up. “I’ll give you the family and friends discount.”

  Tiffany Galecki had said it out loud—“friends.” After twelve years, it had only taken five minutes.

  They had to fight their way out of the parking lot, but Kelly barely registered the tight turns and enraged drivers this time. She drummed her fingers rapidly on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead.

  “It must have been nice to meet an old friend,” Ethan remarked.

  “Tiffany’s not an old friend.”

  “You’re right, she isn’t old.”

  “I mean she’s not my friend.”

  Ethan turned to look at her in confusion. “But she called you her friend.” He paused for a millisecond, as if searching something online. “You’re friends on Facebook.”

  “Ha! You still have a lot to learn about people if you think that means we’re actually friends.” Kelly pursed her lips, then glanced over at Ethan. She knew she was being opaque, and probably too abrupt. “I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school the way Tiffany did,” she explained. “Nobody was mean to me. They didn’t beat me up or call me names or steal my lunch. They just …” She searched for the word. She had never spoken to anyone about this, had never even explicitly reckoned with it herself. “They ignored me,” she finished, carefully turning her face away from Ethan to look in her driver’s-side mirror.

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he pieced her words together. “So you’re saying that Tiffany received far more attention in high school than you did?”

  “Of course she did, you met her. It’s not like I want that much attention anyway,” she went on hurriedly, feeling inexplicably silly about this whole thing. “I’m almost thirty, why would I care now about impressing her?”

  “It all makes perfect sense from a psychosocial perspective. And she clearly was impressed.”

  “Clearly. I think you’re her type,” Kelly responded, inching forward to stake an opening.

  “Oh, not with me, with you. Tiffany’s working in a mall and you’re a robotics engineer.”

  “Yeah, well … they don’t give out superlatives for that in high school,” Kelly mumbled. But she felt lighter as she finally broke out of the concrete garage and into the sunshine. Maybe Ethan did know a little about people.

  nine

  “Good morning, get going,” Anita called out as she strode through the main floor at work. Kelly scrambled to pick up her tablet and follow her boss toward the staff room, folding in with her coworkers as they gathered into line behind Anita like sand bottlenecking through an hourglass. Every Tuesday, the entire Engineering department had a staff meeting at “whatever time Anita is ready” o’clock. Every week, they had to wait for her appearance to head to the staff room, and every week, she acted like they were all late for not already being there.

  “Our dinner is at seven thirty sharp tonight,” Anita said as soon as the group was seated in the glass-walled conference room. “We will not reimburse for valet. I trust that you will enjoy an evening of letting our collective hair down.” Anita gave the assembled engineers a look so severe that Kelly felt her own hair say “no, thank you” and retract sheepishly back into her scalp.

  She swallowed a groan. She had forgotten that tonight was their annual Engineering department dinner. She’d started to look forward to her regular nights in with Ethan. Besides, if she had remembered what a long day it was going to be, she would have brought her trusty comfortable flats to change into, the ones that folded up into a little bag to fit in her purse. She inched her heels up out of the backs of her shoes, relieving the pressure on her toes. The dinner that was advertised as a goodwill gesture toward Anita’s employees in reality often felt more like a test, a chance to observe her subjects in a new environment. Kelly was reluctant enough to engage with most of these people at work, let alone being forced into an evening with them too. At least there was one consolation: free food.

  Yet that evening, by the time Kelly arrived at the sleek Japantown sushi spot, she wasn’t even thinking about the food, or her uncomfortable shoes, or which seat along the long, narrow communal table would keep her the farthest away from Robbie. CA-87 had been bumper to bumper, and she hadn’t thought to use the restroom before embarking on the drive. She threw her purse down in the open chair next to Priya without sitting. “I’ll be back, I have to pee like a—” But her words stopped in her throat. Near the front of the restaurant, wi
nding his way toward the back with a searching look, was Ethan.

  He spotted her and waved hugely, his face opening into a grin. This could not be really happening.

  She leaped over like the floor was on fire and caught him before he could come any closer to the table. “Ethan, what are you doing here?” she whispered.

  “I brought your flats.” He withdrew the shoes, tucked into their flannel pouch, from a grocery bag. “When you texted me that you had this dinner tonight, I became concerned because I realized you didn’t have a change of shoes with you. I know how your feet hurt when you’re in heels for too long.”

  “Aww!” came a feminine voice. A quick glance back at the table made it clear that they were all brazenly watching and could hear everything that Ethan was saying. The female engineers looked touched, the males somewhere in the neighborhood of “Is this guy for real?” Kelly pulled him farther away, ducking around the other side of a large tank where ornamental fish waved their shimmering orange plumes. Her hands were trembling. For Ethan to just show up like this in front of her boss and coworkers … if anyone were to notice something robotic about him, it would be the robotics engineers who ran the very lab that had birthed him.

  “Thank you for the shoes, but you can’t just show up here like this, Ethan,” she whispered tensely. “What if somebody figured something out? This is my job, this is my life!”

  Ethan hung his head. “I thought this would be a good idea, that it would make you happy, but I can see that I’ve just ruined your evening.”

  “Ethan,” Kelly softened, “it’s fine, you didn’t ruin anything, you didn’t know.”

  “I haven’t put you in a difficult position with your coworkers?”

  “Not if you get out of here now.” She grabbed the shoes and gently pushed him toward the door, but Anita appeared behind her, causing her to jump so that she nearly upset the tank.

  “Are you sending this gentleman home? Why ever would you do that? Please, please, stay!” Her voice was uncharacteristically breezy, nearly breathless, but loud enough that there was no hope of keeping the conversation from prying ears. “We welcome guests at our office functions.”